Month: July 2016

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Splat

Further to my previous communication about my virtual radar set I now have been investigating what can be done. I’m waiting for a Raspberry Pi and then I will be able to move the aerial unit higher in the house.

In the mean time, here is a “splat” of what I can “see” using the original aerial and no RPi.

Radar Splat
Radar Splat

Here’s a version zoomed in a little. I’m thinking of taking the unit to the Lake District soon!

Radar Splat
Radar Splat

The different colours represent aircraft at different altitudes. The higher the plane the further away it can be seen.

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ADS-B

I’m interested in aircraft. I don’t know why it started but it’s pretty much always been there. I grew up near Stansted airport and I can remember seeing the Space Shuttle visit in the early 80s, I saw the 747 and Shuttle circle around from the primary school playing field. When I studied art at secondary school every picture of mine contained an aircraft much to my teacher’s annoyance.

Nowadays it’s easy to see aircraft on the web. I have the planefinder app installed on my phone and often tweet when I spot an A380. I only really tweet the A380 as it’s massive and extremely beautiful.

My aircraft thing also meant I travelled to Stansted to see Air Force One take off a few months ago.

28000
28000

I wanted to find a way to see what military aircraft are doing in the skies and I found a website called 360Radar who have this information. The site isn’t open to public yet and I emailed to see if I could get a test account. They said yes.

I like the site. I like the filters and information that I can see. This site relies on people sharing their MLAT data with them and they will offer a free account if you share data. They have a great comprehensive guide to setting up a system that is currently here. I ordered a small aerial and it arrived today. Within about thirty minutes of getting to the computer I was running the data server and sending information to the network.

I have a USB aerial picking up 1090MHz signals from aircraft. I then have a small program running to collate that data and form it into useful data.

Screen Grab of MLAT
Screen Grab of ADS-B Signals

You can see that I am picking up an aircraft over Cherbourg which I think is quite impressive. All of my aircraft are south of my position because my aerial is placed in a south window. I will look into moving the aerial to a more central, higher position in the house so that I can pick up aircraft all over!

Here’s another screen grab of the output from my aerial.

Another ADS-B Map
Another ADS-B Map

How it works

Many aircraft broadcast position information on 1090 MHz. This information comes from the aircraft’s navigation system but does not require the pilot to be involved in the operation of the system. The position of the aircraft is determined by GPS. This output information is called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast. My little aerial picks this up and reads it. My computer then sends this information to a website which aggregates the information.

For aircraft that don’t output the ADS-B signal their position and direction can be known using multilateration [MLAT]. This involves two or more base stations and measuring the time difference between each station receiving a signal. It’s very clever!

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Not A Thing

I should have learnt by now. I really shouldn’t look. But sometimes it’s a handy way to kill twenty minutes. I glance over the headlines of the Daily Mail online to see what crap they are infecting the populous with these days. I saw this:

dailyfail2

Please click on the picture to read more if you want but trust me, it’s propaganda and mostly an advert for an online ancestry DNA company. It also doesn’t tell you anything about your own ancestry.

Up front I should tell you that I have big issues with nationality and pride in our country. I don’t even understand why being born somewhere makes you different to people born in other places. I don’t understand good old British values. For instance, Leonard Da Vinci was born in the Republic Of Florence, but we would describe him as Italian if we wanted to. So where you were born has no influence on the nations that will rise after you and claim you for themselves.

This Ancestry company takes a swab of your DNA and then compares common components of it with that taken from people around the world. This is bullshit. They compare your DNA with that of people living now in other countries to see what you share. That’s what you share now. In this time. Not what you share that’s from a common ancestor. It doesn’t tell you about your “racial” or “nationality” make up. It tells you that you have a common ancestor with people in another country.

EVERY modern European is descended from Charlemagne. Go back far enough and everyone has a common ancestor. Someone having children 2000 years ago has contributed to the DNA of virtually all Europeans.

There is no such thing as race. There is no such thing as nationality.

Now, let’s get to the headline.

Saxons

The Saxons are from Germany. Saxony. In Germany. Or rather in what is now Germany and wasn’t Germany for many many years.

Angles

The Angles were from what is modern Germany. It’s why we are called English. It’s why the French talk about Anglais.

So, there are no British people. Just people who happen to be born on the island of Britain at some point in time.

Fuck the Daily Mail.

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Star Trek Beyond

Last night I went to Cineworld, Rochester to see Star Trek Beyond. It was a curious start to the film as the cinema showed trailers that were all kids’ animated movies and then the classification certificate showed up and said we were about to watch the BFG. After five minutes they had started projecting the correct film. I rated this on IMDB, as usual and here’s a communication that covers my rating system.

Now, you might think a 6 is a little low but film enjoyment is subjective so fuck off.

I saw this in 3D and I don’t like 3D. It adds nothing to a film. If you have good cinematography then you get depth of field from your standard projection, you don’t need 3D. It’s a big bad gimmick. My reaction to this may also be because I have a low 3D perception in these films, I seem less affected by 3D effects, they don’t really stand out much with me.

This film was OK. It had good effects and humour in the right places. I didn’t really like the action sequences. I think they suffered from Transformers Syndrome – too much shit going on at the same time. Just because we have CGI doesn’t mean using it more and more makes a film better.

Here There Be Spoilers

I didn’t like the bad character being human. And a war mongering human at that. A man so annoyed at peace after the wars that he wanted to destroy the human race. Fucking bullshit and lazy.

PHYSICS
We just have to assume that everyone has access to inertial drive technology. I can suspend my disbelief for physics, you get to break a couple of rules. I do wonder if the 5 Year Mission is relative to the Enterprise or to a Base station, given time dilation.

BREAKING THINGS
The Franklin, constructed in space and not meant for atmospheric travel works perfectly well after fifty years on an alien planet? Bullshit. Also, when they drop the Franklin off the cliff top they accelerate and then hit some rock towers on the way down. The ship absorbs these perfectly well like it was designed to smash through rock and mine diamonds. Hated it. The ship would have been torn apart from the first load of rocks. The Franklin hits about four of these mounds and just carries on with no problems. Utter crap. Curiously there was someone in the cinema behind me who was gasping whenever it hit the rocks, this I found amusing. It’s a Hollywood movie, of course they’ll be ok. It reminded me of the people gasping and crying at The Passion Of The Christ, such bullshit.

The Franklin then crashes into the Star City and everyone seems to survive. An entire quarter of the city is evacuated with absolutely no problems. The Franklin seems to be built like a brick-shit-house.

FIRE
When Kirk returns to the disk to collect the magic weapon the whole thing is on fire but he considers it safe to enter and wander around. Bollocks.

MOTORBIKE
Why? A motorbike that works perfectly after 50 years on another planet. Why? Why not a speederbike. Why not anything else? Also, Kirk can see a route down to the base through the caverns and chasms? Hated it.

STAR CITY DESIGN
Why would you design a spaceport that has a large tunnel for the starships to travel through to get to a docking area? The docking area would be somewhere to minimise potential damage to the Star City. Also, why is this tunnel only just wide enough for the Enterprise. There are surely going to be larger ships? Perhaps they have a Panamax type system. Seems very silly to me.

FUCKING USA NAMES
The Enterprise sums up the “American Dream”. Star City was called York Town and the other star ship was called the Franklin. Of these possibly Franklin is the only one with any merit but is really USA-centric. There are other greats of invention and leaders of countries. The arrogance to consider your names will be the names of the future.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into this whole film?

 

And . . . . calm.

I have tried to find my other reviews for the first two Star Trek films on this site and I can’t find them. I possibly didn’t write about them, I don’t know! I can remember reading a lot about the first reboot to try and make sense of why I didn’t really find it brilliant. Much like my issues with Prometheus.

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The Jungle Book

Busy cinema week for me I guess. Took another trip to Cineworld, Rochester. This time to see The Jungle Book. I rated this on IMDB, always look at this communication to explain the system I use.

I have to say that I hadn’t seen the other films. I knew the songs but most Disney stuff is not on my radar. There are many “classics” that I just don’t know. I watched some Disney films over the last year but I wasn’t really that impressed.

This film looked bloody gorgeous. It was worth seeing just to marvel at the animation. The animals are spectacular. It was brilliant.

The story was largely dull, not really something that I thought was brilliant. I was concerned that the animals seemed quite happy to forgive their jungle being burnt down. The overall story is that man is superior. So sad really. Humans may be in charge but we are also fucking the planet over rather well. Sod all this Brexit stuff, we have a much bigger problem to work together and minimise but the current political system won’t allow that.

I was really impressed with the Apocalypse Now! references and I wanted to laugh out loud but I don’t think that would have been understood!

I wasn’t that surprised that some of the songs were kept in the film but would rather they weren’t. Although they may have been the only songs in the animated film, I don’t know, I’ve not seen it.

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Kentish Garden

Took a trip out to Sissinghurst in deepest darkest Kent. It’s a National Trust garden and although billed as a Castle Garden, there wasn’t much of a castle.

It was a nice few hours spent wandering around and see stuff. As someone who isn’t that bothered by plants I guess some of it was lost on me at a deep level. There were plenty of people stopping and smelling and touching the flowers but I didn’t. Yes, they look nice but I’m just not interested.

Here’s a gallery of green.

On a walk around the lakes there was a little door in the bank. How strange.

Doorway
Doorway

There did seem to be quite a few German visitors and this pleased me, the Germans coming over and spending their money, although granted it’s not as much money as before the referendum.

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Ratchet And Clank

Tool a trip to see Ratchet and Clank [The Movie] at Rochester Cineworld. I’m feeling somewhat let down by this film. Anyway, before looking at a Parish Rating you should read this communication about my rating system. As is custom I have also shared my rating using twitter.

This film was a disappointment. Especially after playing the game quite a bit!

The game is brilliant. It’s just about my level of intelligence and playability. I really liked “A Crack In Time” or whatever it was called and I thoroughly enjoy and love the latest game.

The game is based on the film which is based on the game. The problem is that the game is much much better than the film. I wouldn’t recommend any one to see the film. Such a shame really it could have been brilliant.

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Kent Views

Not a great deal of writing with these. Here’s Maidstone bridge over the Medway.

Here’s another Medway bridge this time it’s for the M2 and railway (three bridges really).

Now a picture of a lavender field. There’s another one next to the A229 and from the corner of my eye it looks like an uphill lake!

Finally, here’re some boats, just because.

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The Legend Of Tarzan

I went to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester to see The Legend Of Tarzan. As usual I have rated this film on IMDB and if you aren’t sure of my rating system then you should see this communication.

I thought the film was enjoyable. A good romp with those pesky colonial Belgians in charge. I was largely impressed with the CGI animals, very impressive and realistic. The story was ok but nothing special. My one quibble would be with the physics of swinging on vines and catching a train doing so, simply unrealistic, but a minor infraction for this particular film. I guess I should read the book.

By the way, the first corner at Zandvoort race track is called Tarzan. It is named after the man whose garden was used to create that part of the track.

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+B+G-R

It was a lovely day and I was just walking out to bat and would you believe it? I just had to take a photo. Here’s where I work, in the sunshine.

MGS Hot Day
MGS Hot Day
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